tt 117, 118] First Astronomical Discoveries 149 



No record exists of the exact time at which he first 

 adopted the astronomical views of Coppernicus, hut he 

 himself stated that in 1597 he had adopted them some 

 years before, and had collected arguments in their support. 



In the following year his professorship was renewed for 

 six years with an increased stipend, a renewal which was 

 subsequently made for six years more, and finally for life, 

 the stipend being increased on each occasion. 



Galilei's first contribution to astronomical discovery was 

 made in 1604, when a star appeared suddenly in the con- 

 stellation Serpentarius, and was shewn by him to be at 

 any rate more distant than the planets, a result confirm^ 

 Tycho's conclusions (chapter v., 100) that changes take 

 place in the celestial regions even beyond the planets, and 

 are by no means confined as was commonly believed 

 to the earth and its immediate surroundings. 



1 1 8. By this time Galilei had become famous through- 

 out Italy, not only as a brilliant lecturer, but also as a 

 learned and original man of science. The discoveries 

 which first gave him a European reputation were, however, 

 the series of telescopic observations made in 1609 and the 

 following years. 



Roger Bacon (chapter HI., 67) had claimed to have de- 

 vised a combination of lenses enabling distant objects to be 

 seen as if they were near ; a similar invention was probably 

 made by our countryman Leonard Digges (who died about 

 1571), and was described also by the Italian Porta in 1558. 

 If such an instrument was actually made by any one of the 

 three, which is not certain, the discovery at any rate 

 attracted no attention and was again lost. The effective 

 discovery of the telescope was made in Holland in 1608 

 by Hans Lippersheim (?-i6i9), a spectacle-maker of Middle- 

 burg, and almost simultaneously by two other Dutchmen, 

 but whether independently or not it is impossible to say. 

 Early in the following year the report of the invention 

 reached Galilei, who, though without any detailed informa- 

 tion as to the structure of the instrument, succeeded after 

 a few trials in arranging two lenses one convex and one 

 concave in a tube in such a way as to enlarge the 

 apparent size of an object looked at ; his first instrument 

 made objects appear three times nearer, consequently 



